Production Support Specialist

Within the Production Engineering team, you'll play a senior role supporting business-critical payment applications while leading operational improvements and incident recovery activities. You'll combine strong technical expertise with leadership, helping maintain highly available production systems while driving automation and operational excellence. Acting as a senior technical contributor, you'll coordinate incident resolution, mentor team members, and work closely with engineering and infrastructure teams to improve service reliability. About the Role Service support & incident management Lead service recovery during production incidents and coordinate technical resolver teams. Investigate application and infrastructure issues using logs, SQL queries and Unix/Linux tools. Respond to user queries regarding application behaviour and service usage. Communicate incident impact, progress and recovery plans to stakeholders. Escalate critical incidents appropriately and drive timely resolution. Problem management & continuous improvement Lead or contribute to Root Cause Analysis (RCA) activities. Identify recurring operational issues and implement permanent improvements. Develop operational documentation, runbooks and knowledge sharing materials. Improve monitoring, alerting and operational processes to increase service resilience. Automation & Operational Excellence Design and implement automation using Bash, PowerShell or Python. Develop internal operational tools that reduce manual effort. Demonstrate practical use of AI tools (e.g. Copilot, Claude) to automate operational activities and improve team productivity. Change & Release Support Participate in change reviews ensuring operational readiness and compliance with HSBC standards. Support patching, platform maintenance and disaster recovery activities. Identify operational risks and recommend appropriate mitigations. Qualifications 6+ years of experience in Production Support, Application Support or Software Engineering, preferably within Corporate Banking or Financial Services. Required Skills Strong Unix/Linux skills for production troubleshooting, including navigating the operating system, checking logs and investigating application behaviour. Ability to write complex SQL queries. Experience developing scripts in Bash, PowerShell or Python. Practical experience supporting and maintaining Kubernetes environments. Experience supporting Java/J2EE applications. Experience with Oracle, MQ and WebSphere. Experience using monitoring and observability tools such as Splunk and AppDynamics. Strong understanding of IT infrastructure and distributed systems. Experience leading incident management and coordinating technical teams. Demonstrated track record of implementing automation and operational improvements. Practical experience using AI productivity tools (e.g. Copilot, Claude) to support automation, documentation or operational analysis. Strong communication, stakeholder management and collaboration skills. Preferred Skills Knowledge of payment systems or payment processing concepts. Network troubleshooting knowledge. ITIL certification. Ways of working Standard working hours are within an 08:00–18:00 window (typically 08:00–16:00 or 09:00–17:00), working an 8-hour shift. No regular on-call support is expected. The role includes approximately two weekend working days per month, with time off in lieu provided during the week. The team also provides support on public holidays, with a day off in lieu provided for any public holiday worked. Hybrid working model with a minimum of 8 office days per month. Candidates must already have the legal right to work locally. Candidates must be available locally for one of the technical interviews.